I’ve been re-reading Man’s Search For Meaning by Viktor Frankl, just to brush up on the lessons contained therein.
What an amazing account of such unbelievable suffering, and impossible to put down. I have found reading the book to be humbling experience. It’s put my problems well and truly into the ‘insignificant’ category.
Frankl was one of the few people to survive the Nazi death camps and writes his story from the viewpoint of his position as a psychiatrist.
I’m not going to relate anything from the book, but I strongly recommend you read it.
It’s not about Buddhism, but it really is very Buddhist like.
Sometimes we become involved in other people’s problems, whether we want to be, or not. At times like this, Wisdom, Courage and Compassion are needed, but in a slightly different way than when we have problems of our own.
You know the saying, ‘if it isn’t broken, don’t fix it’ meaning that some things are best left alone. Sadly today has been a day of trying to mend something that wasn’t broken in the first place.
This little software issue is taxing the best brains in our partner company, it looks like a really simple problem, but it’s more tenacious than a Jack Russell with a stick. 
Well that was not a day I care to remember. It started with a ‘dressing down’ from the boss, partly for something that was non of my own doing but mostly for something I hadn’t done. That was closely followed by a number of painful email and telephone conversations, fire-fighting issues over which I have little or no control, caused by malfunctions which are beyond my control.
Life is punctuated by a series of problems and challenges, but what is the real difference between them? Generally speaking we call situations we can deal with, challenges, and those we fear we cannot deal with, problems. But actually, the difference is in our own heads and depends more on our life-state at the time the situation arises.
We all have an inbuilt ability to feel sorry for ourselves. Sometimes it seems we have problem after problem, and think the world is against us. But we can all take a step back and look at our situation compared to others, and the chances are that there are many other people in much worse circumstances.
Have you ever had a problem or situation that has been there for a while, but you can’t drum up the enthusiasm to fix? I know you have, we all have. 
There was once an old lady who cried all the time. Her elder daughter was married to an umbrella merchant while the younger daughter was the wife of a noodle vendor. On sunny days, she worried, “Oh no! The weather is so nice and sunny. No one is going to buy any umbrellas. What will happen if the shop has to be closed?” These worries made her sad. She just could not help but cry. When it rained, she would cry for the younger daughter. She thought, “Oh no! My younger daughter is married to a noodle vendor. You cannot dry noodles without the sun. Now there will be no noodles to sell. What should we do?” As a result, the old lady lived in sorrow everyday. Whether sunny or rainy, she grieved for one of her daughters. Her neighbours could not console her and jokingly called her “the crying lady.”
A man once came to see the Buddha to get help with his problems. After the man had told the Buddha one of his problems and asked for help, the Buddha replied: “I cannot help you get rid of that problem.”
The Search For Enlightenment 
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